A Voice from the Valley
By Tim Dustin
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About this ebook
Tim Dustin
Tim Dustin has earned two degrees in writing, one from Columbia College Chicago and the other from Roosevelt University. He works in marketing and communication at a local church, and he currently lives in St. Charles, Illinois with his beautiful wife, Natalie, and their adopted husky/shepherd mix, Winnie.
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A Voice from the Valley - Tim Dustin
A Voice from the Valley
Tim Dustin
A Voice from the Valley
Copyright © 2021 Tim Dustin. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-0066-4
hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-0067-1
ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-0068-8
05/24/21
For you, God.
May my story be an acceptable offering.
Before I was ever born,
God had his eye on this sparrow
—Eric McIlveen
Table of Contents
Title Page
Our Only Hope
Who’s Driving This Thing?
Creeping Crickets
Naked & Afraid
I Know
Run, Rabbit
Brothers & Sisters
Beggars & Kings
That Broken Man Is Me
Not Overcome
Pain the Devil
Babel
You
Darkness, My Old Friend
Our God
The Moment of Surrender
Only Human
Of Clay
The Can-Do
Attitude
Mission Control
To Find Peace & Rest
Someone Tell Me Why
Spitting Tar
Dive, Dive
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
Amazing Love
Isaac on the Altar
A-C-T-I-O-N
They’re Dimming the Lights Now
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Our Only Hope
One of my writing professors once gave me the advice, Just shut up and write the thing,
and I think that’s what I have to do, otherwise I’ll never get started. It’s hard to say what this is going to be about, because I’m really not too sure at this point. I’m praying God will guide me and guide my words and hopefully only the right ones will make it out onto these pages.
I graduated from undergrad with a 3.9 GPA and recently graduated grad school with a 4.0 GPA, and yet I can’t find a job anywhere. I’ve been looking for six months now, have sent out dozens and dozens of applications, and there’s been nothing, barely a response from any of them. I’m educated, right? Shouldn’t any place be lucky to have me?
However, if only good things happened to good
people and only bad things happened to bad people, life would be fair, almost perfect, but it doesn’t take much these days to look around and see how broken it all is.
I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which has recently been a thorn in my side like I’ve never imagined in my darkest dreams. That being said, I feel a lot of Christian books are written by people who feel they’ve overcome something. Maybe they have the answers, and if you just push on a little further everything will be all sunshine and unicorns and leprechauns and whatever else. But that hasn’t been my journey, and I’m willing to bet it hasn’t been yours either. It doesn’t even matter your age, young or old—we’re all struggling with one thing or another.
I’m calling this A Voice from the Valley because that’s where I am: somewhere in the valley. I haven’t reached the top of the tallest mountain and been able to look down and scoff at everything I’ve overcome. If we’re honest, I don’t know if anyone can do that, especially us Christians, but I don’t know if any of us are supposed to be able to do that.
John 16:33 says, "In this world you will have trouble. We will. It’s right there in black and white, thousands of years old, and yet we throw up our arms in the air whenever troubles find us and we ask,
Why do bad things happen to good people? Life is not easy. Life is hard and unfair and can be bleak and can make you feel so unwanted and so unloved. So where’s the hope? In that same verse, Jesus says,
I have overcome the world." And if that weren’t true, if there wasn’t a loving God up there who gave his only son for you and for me, we’d all be tragically lost, spinning out of control to nowhere on this broken, broken world.
Who’s Driving This Thing?
I graduated from grad school with a degree in creative writing. I wrote a lot of sci-fi thrillers and deep realistic dramas and thought I really had a knack for what I was doing. My professors seemed to like my work, as did my peers and my friends. I thought finding a job after graduation was going to be easy. I had a plan. I was going to get a writing related job, maybe do some tutoring, get